What you can do about the DOJ lawsuit

Following up on my previous blog—and having read a huge amount in the last two weeks about this matter—I feel more strongly than ever that we all, agents, authors, publishers, independent bookstore owners, and readers, can and should do something about the settlement the DOJ is proposing.

In order to try to stop the Department of Justice there is something called The Tunney Act, which allows members of the public to comment on any proposed settlement by the government on a civil antitrust suit. The “Competitive Impact Statement” filed in court by the Department of Justice on April 11th states that the Depart of Justice will cause written comments received from any person to be filed with the court and published in the Federal Register.

If you are in agreement that the terms of the settlement are onerous for publishing and bookstores, you need to write a letter and send it to:

In the Kindle, iPad, Nook struggle for market share, I have to wonder if both iPad and Nook will, in the end, have an edge over Kindle.

Both Apple and B&N do have bricks/mortar stores where a customer can go talk, face-to-face, with someone who can assist with the ‘tablet’ device.

So, will the potential for actual human-interaction be a long-range benefit to the product?

I do know people who are choosing the Nook just because they can have that face-to-face help.

On the matter of price fixing in the eBook market, one hopes a review of the actual cost of producing an eBook be part of the final decision by the DOJ and its “JUST” review of the Amazon, B&N, Apple, publisher manner of deciding on end-point pricing.

Otherwise, we will know where Apple and Amazon are spending their considerable cash-on-hand: payment to lobbyist.